Pedestal
by Nic Neptune
Summary: Why did Constance never stand up to Mistress Broomhead? Was it because she feared her or was it because neither woman could exist without the other?


_**Hello! This is just a little oneshot revolving around a poem I wrote a few months ago. I hope you enjoy it and would like to thank you in advance for reading (and reviewing? … please? =P) **_

**Disclaimer: I do not own the Worst Witch. The characters, settings and otherwise are the property of Jill Murphy and the creators of the TV adaptation of the Worst Witch. **

**Pedestal:**

"You are no good Constance!" was one of many slurs running through her mind.

_The pedestal lay beneath its majesty,  
__It is tall, it is grand as a zande.  
__A pedestal leaves a long way from the top  
__If one should drop, should drop a mile._

Constance Hardbroom was a woman that liked her own company. She liked to sit down in her bedroom each night and experiment with new potions or even just sit by the window and look upon the vast ocean of stars in the sky and contemplate. She liked peace and quiet; she liked demure settings with little more than a candlelit ambience to illuminate her environment. In other words, she liked to be alone. She liked to relax (if one can really relax with a lack of contentment in one's soul) with only her shadows for company.

Constance was never always alone. She had a loving family - a mother who used to cuddle her when she would scrape her knee and a father who taught her how to take on the world. But they died … tragically. She never quite knew the circumstances surrounding their simultaneous suicides - madness? Her parents were not the types to descend into madness, she thought. No, there was something else. Another cause - a third party - an influence. Namely, the Mistress of the Macabre. A certain Mistress that would haunt her potent soul until her dying day.

Perhaps the only thing that kept her alive was the notion that she had power. A bust was nothing without the pedestal beneath it. If Constance fell, so did Heckety. If Constance weakened, so did Heckety. Heckety knew this. A model liked to give the impression it stood alone. Thus, Constance became a part of her. She saw power within that little girl and she wished to snatch it for herself. The pedestal was no longer a pedestal but an extension of one weaker being. Thus, Heckety seized Constance for herself…she consumed her completely and utterly. She sucked the life out of her, the colour, the soul - she only left a shell destined for a life of hell.

_Tipping, tapping, knocking, thumping,  
__No one casts a notion on the plinth.  
__It is hollow, void as a heart of stone -  
__If one had known, what dwelled within._

Why should she like being alone? One would think that one gets sick of loneliness, but really, it becomes banal. The cutting, the hints, the absconding were cries for help but no one was willing to listen. They were too busy gazing lovingly at her majesty. A woman of great power, so they said. A great woman who took a young, sickly orphan under her wing. A girl who allegedly 'struggled' at her studies and needed extra tutoring. A lady who took this unwanted wreck to her home over the holidays. She could never complain without being punished harshly by those around her.

"You ungrateful little brute!" they used to say.

It was evident Constance was never a happy girl. She flinched from her mistress, she stuttered, she cried.. Nobody knew. They were otherwise occupied with the grandeur of the lady in white.

People presumed that Heckety's successes were owing to her power, but in fact, it was Constance. Constance was the source of her power, the source of her experimentation and the source of her methods. Heckety was the idea woman but she could never have achieved anything without a certain young Hardbroom. If anyone knew, even had any faith in her, that she could have such power dwelling within her things could have been different. She may have escaped … but she didn't, because truly, no one casts a notion on the plinth. It is a widely known fact that the masses do not care for how you got to the top, only the fact that you are there.

_The model upon is an effigy below,  
__The weight on the shoulders, the  
__Cracks that blow, no one knows the  
__Anathema of a dais._

She was a true noble, a scholar - she dined with kings and queens. At a distance she seemed powerful but up close, she was made of the same material as the pedestal beneath her. Constance always thought she hated her. The beatings, those long brutal hours of torture sitting in her cell of a room with a candle weeping and contorting below the inferno.

Heckety never hated Constance. She _feared _her. Constance had the necessary power to break her. Constance and only Constance could bring about her fall from grace. Heckety needed her and the only way to keep her was to instil a mutual fear into her waning soul. What Heckety would never know was that Constance also needed her. A pedestal wouldn't be a pedestal without its model. She would never have done or seen grand things without her. So, she came to realise, she too _needed _Heckety. They were bound together in a sick form of want. She tried to run but her majesty always found her. There was only one model for each pedestal. She lived a curse, she thought, she truly did. Not even those closest to her could know that she would never truly escape Heckety because one could not exist without the other.

_**Thank you for reading! Reviews (be it positive feedback or constructive criticism) are more than welcome! **_


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